Open for Takeout: Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack

Rich Cundiff of Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack—where both locations are still operating astoundingly popular to-go and pick-up options—shares the history and future of Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack:

“Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack started as a one-man operation in 2009. Rocky Lindsley was a professional musician from Asheville working in Nashville when he discovered and fell in love with Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. He rented a tiny space on Hendersonville Road in Asheville, bought a single fryer, and opened up for lunch only. He had less than twenty seats and offered three cuts of chicken spiced as you liked and a choice of potato salad or coleslaw. Within months, Rocky had been covered in the local newspaper, and he was ironically famous for running out of chicken and closing early with a hand-written sign on the door. Within a few months, Rocky burned out and closed the doors to his shack.

“At that time, a grassroots social media movement began online with “Bring Back Rockys Facebook,” and it got a lot of local attention. Rocky asked me and my wife Lauren to help him reopen “the right way this time” because we were big fans of his chicken, and we agreed to be his investment partners and advisors. About eighteen months later, in June of 2011, we opened Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack on Patton Avenue in Asheville and became an evolutionary success. It took us a while to manage food consistency and to properly construct our menu and our systems, but Asheville was patient with us and forgave us our mistakes. We were adopted by members of the “Bring Back Rocky’s” group, and they and our team members helped us perfect our menu, our food, and our smooth operations with a steady stream of feedback and support.

“I have a food background and I worked tirelessly on refining our recipes and kitchen processes. My wife, Lauren, handled the front of house and established our “high touch, fact casual” service model. These are our two greatest strengths: Our food is really good, and our team is really nice, and they care about our guests—and it shows.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, we closed our dining room before it was required of us because we could see the writing on the wall and knew it was the only right thing to do.

“We have developed a curb-service model of order pickup and we have continued working with our local delivery partners to provide our food outside of our dining rooms. It started slowly (sales were down 60%) but caught on over time as we refined our systems and learned from our mistakes. Within three weeks, we were only down 40%, and we continue to improve. Our increasing volume has taken a toll on our order accuracy, and we continue to strive to do better in this area as we evolve our labor model to keep up with demand. Now our team members wear gloves and masks and hand over sealed bags of our delicious food as people drive through. We aren’t accustomed to providing service while masked, so this is an adjustment to our service mentality, and we are still figuring out how to best deal with it.

As owners, we were lucky in this scenario because we tend toward financial conservatism. One of our big takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic has been: Have a year’s worth of working capital in the bank at all times. Keep some dry powder so you are prepared for the unexpected—cause this sure was unexpected!”